There is a version of the Los Angeles arrival story that everybody already knows: someone shows up with a demo, waits to be picked, and calls themselves an artist once somebody else says so. artxxnas — the project of Russian-born, Los Angeles-based artist Artur Nasyrov — is built on the refusal of that sequence. His new single, “STAR,” released 13 August 2026, is essentially a four-minute argument that the permission was never anyone else’s to give.
It is also the first release designed to travel. “STAR” is the English-language reimagining of “Zvezda” (“Star”), the Russian single he put out in 2024 — the same declaration, sung on the other side of an ocean. “STAR isn’t a translation of ‘Zvezda,’” he says in his press materials. “It’s the same person after crossing an ocean.”
At a glance
- Artist: artxxnas (Artur Nasyrov) — Los Angeles-based queer pop artist and multidisciplinary creator
- From: born and raised in Russia; left in 2022, arrived in the United States in late 2023
- New single: “STAR,” a rap-pop / hyperpop track released 13 August 2026 — the English-language evolution of his 2024 Russian single “Zvezda”
- Albums: ART (2025) and XX (2026), both released 13 January, his birthday
- Beyond music: ARTXXSEX (body-as-brush visual art, shown during DTLA Art Night) and XXDESIGN (those paintings turned into clothing)
- Performance: LA Pride, 8 June 2025 — body, simulated blood and the Russian flag on Hollywood Boulevard
- On “STAR”: developed in Los Angeles with Grammy-nominated vocal artist and coach Anny Key, whom he credits as his vocal mentor
- Listen: Spotify · Apple Music · artxxnas.com
Who is artxxnas?
artxxnas is the artistic identity of Artur Nasyrov, a queer multidisciplinary artist working in Los Angeles across music, visual art, performance and fashion. On Spotify he introduces himself in six words — “russian queer pop artist based in Los Angeles” — and the rest of the project is an argument for why those categories belong in the same sentence.
The unusual part is what he was doing before. Nasyrov studied landscape architecture at RUDN University in Moscow, graduating in 2022 with plans to spend his life building living environments. Then 2022 happened. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and after growing up in a country steadily more hostile to open queer life — he left, spending time outside Russia before landing in the United States in late 2023.
He has not actually abandoned the plants. He is still studying landscape architecture, now at Pierce College in Los Angeles, and he treats the discipline as the operating logic of everything else. A landscape architect assembles separate living elements into a single designed environment; artxxnas assembles music, paintings, clothing, photography, bodies and performance the same way. “He left one landscape behind,” as his press bio puts it. “He arrived in another.”
ARTXXSEX: what happens when the body is the brush
The most distinctive corner of that world is ARTXXSEX, a visual art project in which Nasyrov paints using his own body instead of a brush — pressing, dragging and printing himself onto the surface. The results read as Rorschach-adjacent burgundy blooms and smoked monochrome impressions: abstract enough to be beautiful, specific enough that you keep working out which part of a person made which mark.
According to his press materials, the work went public across three consecutive months of DTLA Art Night in 2025 — Emerging Gallery in May, Kiso Bar in June, The Kult in July.
XXDESIGN: the painting leaves the wall
Then the work kept moving. Under XXDESIGN, the ARTXXSEX paintings became garments — oversized heavyweight T-shirts carrying the body prints, sold through artxxnas.com in series named BURGUNDIA and NIMBUS alongside the STAR and Cyrillic ZVEZDA pieces.
The campaign imagery makes the lineage literal: each model wears the shirt and holds the original painting it came from, so the translation from body to canvas to cotton is visible in one frame.
His own summary of the chain is the cleanest description of the project anyone is likely to write: a body can create a painting; a painting can become clothing; clothing can become performance; performance can become music. It is all, he argues, the same work.
LA Pride 2025: freedom that only belongs to you
That chain reached its most confrontational point on 8 June 2025. During LA Pride, artxxnas staged a performance on Hollywood Boulevard using his body, simulated blood and the Russian flag — a deliberate interruption of a celebration, staged inside the celebration itself.
The intention, he says, was never to reject Pride. It was to complicate it. “I can experience freedom here, but I can’t feel it with my whole chest knowing that people where I came from are still afraid to be themselves,” reads the line he returns to. He is careful not to claim he speaks for every queer Russian person; his position is narrower and, arguably, more useful — that openly constructing his own life is one demonstration that a different reality is available.
It is worth noting what that costs. An artist who left Russia in 2022 and now performs bloodied on Hollywood Boulevard with the flag of the country he left is not making a career-safe object. The provocation has a bill attached, and it is one reason the work reads as something other than content.
Provocation as a mirror
Online, the same instincts have found scale. His press materials put his reach at up to 3.5 million monthly views and hundreds of thousands of reposts across platforms — numbers driven less by any single song than by performances, visual experiments and an unapologetically sexual persona that people either identify with or reject outright.
He is interested in both reactions, and treats the hostile one as material rather than damage. The questions he keeps circling are genuinely good ones: why does watching another person openly love themselves provoke anger? Why is confidence celebrated only after society has decided someone has earned it? Why should authenticity require consensus?
From “Zvezda” to “STAR”
Those questions are the actual subject of the new single. “STAR” inverts the usual order of operations — you are supposed to become a star and then act like one. Society, as he frames it, grants confidence retroactively: once the success, the money, the followers and the awards are in place, the self-belief looks justified in hindsight. “STAR” proposes the opposite. Self-worth comes first; recognition may follow, or may not.
It also marks a change in method. Where the project has largely been built alone and by instinct — self-created, self-released — “STAR” came out of a more formal studio process, developed with Anny Key, the Grammy-nominated vocal artist and coach he credits as his vocal mentor. For an artist who has built nearly every element of his world himself, collaboration was the experiment. What he has kept is the part that is hardest to outsource: the raw vocal, the Russian accent, the refusal to sand the edges off for an American market.
Where to start with artxxnas
The catalogue is small and deliberately arranged. Two studio albums — ART (2025) and XX (2026) — both released on 13 January, his birthday, which tells you roughly everything about how he thinks about self-mythology. Around them sit “Zvezda” (2024) and now “STAR.”
- Start with: “STAR” — the thesis statement, and the first track written for listeners who do not speak Russian
- Then: “Zvezda,” the 2024 original, to hear what changed and what deliberately did not
- Then: XX (2026), the fuller picture of the pop project
- Then close the loop: the ARTXXSEX paintings and XXDESIGN pieces at artxxnas.com — the music is only one entrance
The message underneath the provocation
For all the blood, mesh and gold star costuming, the ask is modest. “My work isn’t about teaching people how to be like me,” he says. “It’s about giving them permission to be more like themselves.”
He frames that as bigger than sexuality. Anyone can be trained to become smaller — because of a body, a gender, a culture, an ambition, or simply because the person they want to become makes someone else uncomfortable. artxxnas lives in the space between the pairs: nature and sexuality, landscape and body, vulnerability and narcissism, Russia and Los Angeles, artist and architect, beauty and discomfort, Artur and artxxnas.
Whether the wider audience arrives is, by the logic of the song, beside the point. “You don’t have to wait until somebody chooses you,” goes the line he ends his press bio on. “You can choose yourself first.”
Frequently asked questions
Who is artxxnas?
artxxnas is the artistic project of Artur Nasyrov, a Los Angeles-based queer pop artist and multidisciplinary creator born and raised in Russia. He works across music, body-based visual art, performance and fashion, and describes himself on Spotify as a “russian queer pop artist based in Los Angeles.” He left Russia in 2022 and arrived in the United States in late 2023, building the artxxnas project in Los Angeles.
What is the song “STAR” by artxxnas?
“STAR” is a rap-pop / hyperpop single released on 13 August 2026. It is an English-language reimagining of “Zvezda” (“Star”), the Russian-language single artxxnas released in 2024 — the same declaration of self-belief, rewritten for an international audience. It was developed in Los Angeles with Grammy-nominated vocal artist and coach Anny Key, whom he credits as his vocal mentor.
What is ARTXXSEX?
ARTXXSEX is the visual art project in which artxxnas uses his own body as the painting instrument rather than a brush. Works from the project were shown in Los Angeles during DTLA Art Night, and the resulting paintings were later adapted into wearable pieces through his clothing project, XXDESIGN.
What is XXDESIGN?
XXDESIGN is the artxxnas clothing project. It takes the original body-created paintings from ARTXXSEX and prints them onto oversized heavyweight T-shirts, including the BURGUNDIA and NIMBUS series, sold through artxxnas.com. It is the point where the gallery work leaves the wall and enters everyday public space.
What albums has artxxnas released?
artxxnas has released two studio albums: ART (2025) and XX (2026). Both were released on 13 January — his birthday. His catalogue also includes the 2024 Russian-language single “Zvezda” and the 2026 single “STAR,” and is available on Spotify and Apple Music.
What did artxxnas do at LA Pride?
On 8 June 2025, during LA Pride, artxxnas staged a performance on Hollywood Boulevard using his body, simulated blood and the Russian flag. His stated intention was not to reject Pride but to complicate it — to interrupt a celebration of visibility with a reminder that for queer people in the country he left, visibility can still be dangerous.
Where can I listen to artxxnas?
artxxnas is on Spotify and Apple Music, and his music, artwork and XXDESIGN pieces are collected at artxxnas.com. He is @artxxnas on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook.
“STAR” by artxxnas is out now. Listen on Spotify and Apple Music, explore the artwork and XXDESIGN pieces at artxxnas.com, and follow him on Instagram and TikTok at @artxxnas. Photography and artwork supplied by the artist.
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